The deeper currents

Kirstin Vanlierde
The Story Hall
Published in
4 min readOct 3, 2019
© Inaya photography

There was a time, in my teen and late adolescent years, that I felt words were useless to describe the vastness of some of my inner feelings. Inside me, there were oceans of currents, defying any description. They were not necessarily amorous or even tempestuous, they were just very deep. And as much as I enjoyed writing, words turned out to be utterly impotent at capturing them.
In those days, I would turn to the piano to give a voice (or rather: a sound) to all that I felt could be experienced but not spoken.

I have never abandoned music, even though I put the thought of a professional musical career aside a long time ago. Words, stories, language, they were ever my vocation and my strongest love. I have grown into a writer and an editor who can stand her ground.

But the love of things deeply perceived but gone unspoken has never left me. Hence my love of images, of music. Of nature, above all.
And even as I deepen and refine my relationship to language, both personally and professionally, I feel a growing sense of apprehension. I am venturing ever deeper into that realm that will not stand for words, that does not need them, does not even tolerate them.

© Inaya photography

What catches my attention are roots, threads, stems, branches, leaves, streams, flows. Galaxies, both of this world and not of it, unfolding and imploding, over and over again. The similarities between all living forms. The current flowing through everything, either living or dead. The breath of the universe.

I realize that for most people, this is a long way off from their everyday affairs, the small yet very significant happinesses and sadnesses of their lives. And I do not mean to belittle them. We all inhabit a story that resonates with us, and like in any healthy ecosystem, there is room for all. My personal perspective happens to be rather shamanistic, that’s all. The outskirts of society is where I feel most at home. My allegiance, I’m afraid, is not to mankind.

My personal story relates to atoms and galaxies rather than societies. I am not a hermit, and I cherish certain people in my close circle very dearly, but at the same time another part of me accepts that we are all little more than stardust, suspended in a temporary stage from one sort of physical manifestation to another. All we can ever know for sure, is that everything changes yet no energy is ever lost.

I am navigating an intricate energy matrix of which the human life component is no more than a thin veneir, helpful in navigating a context like for instance gravity, but not essential in any meaningful sense.

This journey I am undertaking is far for completed. As I travel the road I feel is mine, I hope words will remain my allies. To tell of my adventures and insights, whenever it is suitable. But I will not force them. I hope images and perhaps even music will remain my allies as well, to give a face or a voice to what I can no longer describe.

And if, in the end, silence is all that wishes to remain, the central axis of a life resonating with beauty and connection, who am I to complain?

The deeper currents have their own way of weaving stories, after all.

A. Gormley, Matrix III © Inaya photography

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Kirstin Vanlierde
The Story Hall

Walker between worlds, writer, artist, weaver of magic